


nothing worth finding at the bottom of a bottle

by akisawana



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: M/M, Reverse Big Bang Challenge, Weird Alien Shit, love potions, tucker makes poor choices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-04 23:58:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12782442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akisawana/pseuds/akisawana
Summary: Written for the Reverse Big Bang 2017 challenge. Art by the lovelyagent-murica.Chose not to use archive warnings because I am notoriously terrible at warning appropriately, please proceed at your own risk.





	nothing worth finding at the bottom of a bottle

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Reverse Big Bang 2017 challenge. Art by the lovely [agent-murica](https://agent-murica.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Chose not to use archive warnings because I am notoriously terrible at warning appropriately, please proceed at your own risk.

On the moon, there was a Red base and a Blue base.

At least, there was a Red base, and there was a not-Red base. Since none of Blue team felt like getting shot without need, that made it Blue base by default.

It wasn’t so bad, Tucker thought. There was Wash, and Caboose, who he’d been with for so long he loved him as he might a brother. Which is to say, he’d ride or die for Caboose but he’d also just as soon kick him off a building. Still, it wasn’t so bad, especially with Wash there to take the brunt of Caboose’s affection.

Carolina, though, wasn’t there. Sarge had declared her a Red, on account of her hair, and she’d immediately joined them. Betrayal enough on its own, but she kept trying to steal Wash. Not that Wash was fighting particularly hard. Fuck them both; Caboose wasn’t that bad. Not now, anyways. 

It had to be Caboose. It certainly wasn’t Tucker’s fault. Who wouldn’t want to be in his company? Grif certainly didn’t mind it, and there was a whole new tangle of condoms. All Grif could talk about was Simmons, and the awkwardness of everyone assuming they’d fucked in that goddamn closet.

They hadn’t; for whatever reason. They’d stayed in the closet, with their pants on, and people had assumed, and then they’d gotten mad, and people assumed they were hiding something. Tucker didn’t; Grif had sworn up one side and down the other that they didn’t and Tucker believed him. If he had, he wouldn’t be this fucking annoying. Or at least, he’d be off annoying Simmons and leaving Tucker to read the tales told of his exploits on that night. Most of them weren’t true, but whatever. Better to be remembered as the lover he was than the fighter he never wanted to be.

Today Grif wasn’t around, and the sun was bright, and Tucker didn’t need to be wearing his armor, so he was laying on the grass in his shorts and thinking that maybe, maybe, he just didn’t remember what to do if someone wasn’t shooting at him. That was a thing, right?

“Why aren’t you answering your phone?” Caboose asked, materializing out of nowhere and taking fifteen years off Tucker’s life at least.

“Goddamnit, Caboose,” Tucker said when he could breathe again, glaring at the outdated helmet. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” Caboose sat on the grass, his armor heavy.

“Sneak up on me.” Tucker flung himself back to the ground. “Goddamn.”

“I was not sneaking,” Caboose said. “You were being inattentive. Silly Tucker, you’re going to get shot. Today is a shooting day.”

Tucker covered his face with his hands. “Who shot you today?”

“Sarge.” Caboose plucked a single blade of grass from the ground. “I was too far away and he missed.” He brought the blade up in his cupped hands; Tucker presumed to make a grass-whistle, but obviously it didn’t work with the helmet. Or perhaps he was trying to eat it.

“He shouldn’t be shooting at you in the first place.” Tucker rolled over, away from Caboose who deserved better.

Caboose shrugged; Tucker could hear his armor plates rubbing against each other. “They are only nice to me when things are very bad. I like it better when they are mean.”

“He should just accept there’s nobody he should be shooting,” Tucker said. “That ain’t right, dude.”

“I can’t change how he feels,” Caboose said, quite smartly. “He really hates blue.”

“So I’ve noticed,” Tucker snapped. He felt bad about it almost immediately, but he didn’t apologize.

“Wash is making grilled cheese,” Caboose said after a minute, his heavy hand resting lightly on Tucker’s back.

“I’ll bring the fire extinguisher.” Tucker stood. Barefoot, he was almost a whole twelve inches shorter than Caboose, and looking him in the eye -or at least visor- was quite literally a pain in the neck.

***

Tucker liked to explore the moon. He claimed he walked off to masturbate, and that won him half a day or more of solitude. But really, he just liked to poke around the caves and rocks and little crannies like he hadn’t since he was a small child.

Growing up in Detroit, he’d been safe to explore where he would, but it was a thousand year old city. There just wasn’t that much to find that wasn’t built by human hands. He’d never been farther than Pontiac before joining the army, and when he’d been posted to bumfuck nowhere, there had been enemies, and amateur geology sucked when you could run into an angry old guy armed with a shotgun at any second.

Still, patrol had been almost enjoyable, and now it was even better. He didn’t have to worry about check-ins or enemy movements, though for the sake of Wash and Caboose’s blood pressure he wore his armor with its comm link and distress beacon.

The landscape was not beige so much as dull gold, shot through with grey-purple bands of some rock he could not name, and little springs that rose out of the ground like some poetic metaphor. The grass was green, save where it was brown, the color of his mother’s skin, and he missed her fiercely, dead almost fifteen years now. There were small pink flowers, and sometimes he made chains like she’d taught him to long ago, with yellow dandelions he hadn’t seen since he found a patch growing on Chorus, carefully tended.

It was easy to find caves, once you knew the trick. Where the water ran the swiftest, and doubly so if it was a proper stream, it carved away soft rock. The caves were worn smooth with water’s caress, and most of their floors were covered with the sandy beds of almost-disappeared rivers. Tucker wandered, looking for some new hole to explore, or a yellow flower, or nothing at all.

What he found was the word “safe,” a careful Sangheili glyph carved long ago, so old Tucker would have hardly recognized the symbol worked in the old style even if it had been fresh-cut.

The inside of the cave was different, too, grey rock instead of gold, dry and cold and smoother than the rest. Unnaturally smooth, like it had been carved by civilized hands. Tucker was curious, and it had been marked safe, so he turned his headlamp on and eased in. The floor was even under his feet, and every so often, his headlamp flickered against smooth plates in the wall, eight or so feet above the ground. Tucker didn’t know much of the old writing, but he recognized some of what was carved low, at his eye level where no Sangheili searching the floor or ceiling was likely to see. The tunnels were marked, “trap” and “sanctuary,” “exit” and “treasure.” He’d read them before, in the desert temple.

He followed the one marked “treasure,” for what had to be miles, drawn on by the promise of something, anything new. The days on this moon blended into featureless monotony and the same petty disagreements, circling around and around as unchanging and predictable as orbit. It wasn’t quite bad enough for Tucker to wish to return to war. But he was starting to understand how some people re-enlisted, instead of running away the second they were sure they wouldn’t be shot in the back as a deserter. Sometimes, he caught himself wishing for something to remind Grif or Caboose just how pointless arguing over chocolate versus strawberry ice cream was. He feared he was hoping for a fight. Sometimes, he had to press his hand against old scars until he remembered the pain, and how sometime things that were exciting were worse. Not now, so far beneath the pettiness he half-wondered if he would return to find a hundred years had passed like Rip Van Winkle, where his headlamp was the first light to fall upon these old stones in what he fancied was a thousand years or more

Near the final bend, he saw one more sigil he knew. A face, exaggerated eyes peering over a wall, with the words “Kil'roy was here,” scrawled underneath. An old bit of graffiti, placed anywhere and everywhere elites could be found, and it gave Tucker courage. He’d seen that below Blood gulch and on Chorus, on Sanghelios where the air smelled of oranges and inside Junior’s locker at school. Wherever the warriors went, they brought Kil'roy. They had been here, and left Kil'roy to wait for whoever followed. And Tucker wasn’t an Elite, except in the only way that counted.

The swords were keys, using the same frequency for generations. It was better that way; for a thousand years no other race had unlocked the secret, not even the Huragok, and Tucker was the first non-Sangheili in remembered history to carry one. The Sangheili did not trap their storeroom doors. They were unhackable, and Tucker opened it without a second thought.

He did hum the Indiana Jones theme, though.

It was mostly empty, the provisions carried away by some other group of soldiers who probably were in actual need. But it was someplace Tucker had never been before, and he walked around the chamber slowly, one hand on his hip. There was only one box left, and Tucker pressed the hilt of his sword into the recess, hoping for porn or maybe pretzels. One was easier to get on this rock than the other. There were neither, only a diffuse glow that his visor couldn’t clear. Tucker took his helmet off, set it to the side, and peered into the crate.

The crystals shone upon his face, gold and rose and the aqua-teal the color of his armor, scintillating in the darkness like the sea under the silver moon. It was like nothing he’d ever seen in all his long quests, nothing he’d ever heard about. It didn’t seem real. Hardly knowing what he was doing, Tucker replaced the lid, and his helmet, and with a future cube packed up the crate to take back to his bunk, in the base for the Blues.

***

He had his own room, at least. That wasn’t something he was used to. At first, Caboose and he had squeezed into one, and both of them claimed it was for Caboose’s sake, because as much as Caboose swore he hated Tucker, he had Tucker’s back, and Wash asked so many less questions whenever Caboose was involved. Then they were at the New Republic, and they bunked together for Caboose’s sake truly, but now, in peace, they were trying this privacy thing. The light was yellow and hummed faintly, entirely human. Sangheili artifacts never quite looked right under it. They looked real.

They were bottles of glass, clear as any Tucker had ever seen. The colors came from the liquids inside, filled to within a fingernail of the lid, sparkled with glitter spiraling in trapped galaxies. On the tops, faintly visible, were carved more of the old words, elegant swirls that mirrored the tattoos on Tucker’s back. Some of them he recognized. Love, said one the color of a matriarch’s eye. Another said far-sight, and it was the color of a sniper rifle’s bullet.

Tucker opened it with shaking naked hands. Alice had eaten the cake and drank the potion, and nothing terribly bad had happened. Why should this be any different? Besides. It was for Sangheili. Like as not, it wouldn’t affect him at all.

It had been so long, he’d forgotten about his eyes. Tucker had been born with his mother’s eyes, and then he’d lost them, and the Space Pope had apologized so profusely but it could not be undone. He didn’t think about it any more, because he was afraid if he did, he might resent Junior. That happened, from time to time, with a certain class of single parent. It would not happen to Tucker; he would not hold Junior accountable for Crunchbite’s sins. Tucker’s mother and father and aunts and uncles had raised him better than that. 

It burned going down, like cheap bourbon on his nineteenth birthday at the Windsor ballet, a shudder chasing it down his spine as his eyes squeezed shut of their own accord. He held them closed for a few seconds, as novae burst in his belly and sparks danced in his bones, until the last sparks faded like fireworks over the river. Until the magic was gone, and he was standing in his perfectly ordinary room with blued-steel flooring.

He opened his eyes, blinked until everything came into proper focus. The shadows seemed cleaner, every rivet and scratch suddenly thrown into sharp relief. The room was small, too small, when he could be outside under the wide sky. Before he left, he slid the crate behind the bed, tossed his blanket over it. It seemed…right.

Outside felt good, the wind on his face, the faintest trace of the daytime satellite visible, the smoke from Red base drifting north-wards. Tucker sat down in his favorite spot and watched Donut chasing Lopez. Donut must be in a polishing mood; he was brilliantly pink and Tucker found it hard to look straight at him.

“Well, you look happy,” Grif said, some time later, perching on his rock. His armor was dusty and scratched, which meant Tucker wasn’t in danger of blindness from looking at him too long. “I hope you saved some for Carolina.”

“Saved what?” Tucker asked, twisting his head to look for Carolina. She’d stolen Wash for special freelancer training, like she did most days, and he hadn’t seen either of them since. Now, he spotted her red hair down halfway between the bases, and the faintest blue smoke escaping from behind a rock very much like the one Grif and Tucker were lurking behind. Those bastards. Tucker had invented that.

“Never mind,” Grif said, leaning back on his hands. “Your funeral.” They sat in companionable silence for some time, and Tucker tracked a bird across the canyon. It looked like a crow. Were there crows on this planet? “Donut’s on about it again,” Grif said finally. “Does anything make him shut up?”

“No,” Tucker said, poking the ground with a stick. “Absolutely nothing. Once he’s got an idea in his head, it takes an earthquake to dislodge it.”

“We tried distracting him.” Grif jabbed at Tucker’s stick with one of his own.

Tucker made a rude noise, swatting back. “Don’t. That’ll just encourage him to keep on. You just have to wait it out until he finds something else to distract him. Something you couldn’t possibly be using as a lure.”

“Easy for you to say.” Grif cursed fluently when Tucker rapped his stick across Grif’s armored knuckles. 

“Since when did Donut bother you?” Tucker asked. “Since when did anything bother you?”

“It’s not me he’s bothering,” Grif muttered darkly, stabbing at Tucker’s hand to start round two.

Tucker dodged it nimbly. “Since when did Donut bothering someone else bother you? I thought you’d be cracking open ice cream for the occasion.”

“He’s bothering Simmons.” Grif switched to an underhand grip. “Which makes it ten times worse, because you know who Simmons thinks cares?”

“If you’re trying to tell me you don’t,” Tucker said. Why wouldn’t they just admit it? Everyone could see it for the past ten years.

Grif tossed away his stick. “Fuck you,” he said, conversationally.

“You can’t handle it,” Tucker shot back.

Grif grumbled and pushed Tucker over. Tucker squawked and would have punched him, except for the shotgun blast that shattered the air. “Dangnabbit Grif! Why did you move?”

“Daddy’s calling.” Tucker grinned up at Grif. “Better go see what he wants.”

Grif aimed a kick at Tucker, though it was more of a friendly nudge, and then he was gone with only a wave goodbye. But there was defeat in the line of his shoulders, and Tucker wished he could do something to help his friend.

***

Tucker opened up the crate that night, since clearly he found them for a reason. Love was easy to find, of course there was a love potion. Friendship, he found labeled with the old word, the one written on his own skin. There were potions of hate and fury, and he put those back. That wasn’t what he was going for here. He did find one of welcome, and he set it aside as well. Joy was easiest. It was the color of Junior’s teeth, smiling up at him. Fate had a hand in this. It was meant to be.

After all, the far-sight one made him feel so good, see so sharp. It would be selfish not to share with his friends.

Carolina was hanging around outside, and he offered her one. She didn’t even ask what was in it, just swallowed it down and thanked him. Three years ago, he would have wondered if it was the liquid or the gesture that made her realize she had a place with them. Now, he knew better. It would take an act of God or very powerful chemicals to make her realize she was part of the team. But if there was something Carolina would not willingly swallow, Tucker had not found it.

Grif was in their place, and he looked suspiciously at the bottle Tucker offered. “What the hell,” he said, and threw it back before Tucker could tell him the conditions. Namely, that if he didn’t drink it, he wasn’t allowed to bitch about Simmons ever again. Tucker let him keep the bottle, just because he was nice that way.

Sarge he found up to his armpits in the Warthog’s engine. “What the hell?” he asked, just like Grif. Church had said once that Grif was Sarge’s son, and sometimes Tucker almost believed it.

“Poison.” Tucker gave Sarge his most brilliant smile.

Sarge swallowed it and laughed in Tucker’s face when he lived. Tucker smiled and walked away. Maybe things would suck less now.

Caboose was at the bottom of the canyon, at the side of the river, splayed dramatically half in the water. “Tucker,” he moaned. “Tucker.”

“What’s wrong, Caboose?” Tucker dropped to his heels next to Caboose’s head.

“I miss Church,” Caboose sniffed. “Today is his birthday.”

It wasn’t, but whatever. Tucker patted Caboose on the shoulder.

“And I tried to make him a cake and Wash tried to help and now the cake is soup,” Caboose went on. “That was the last box of cake mix. What am I going to do if Church shows up and I don’t have a cake? He’ll think we are not very best friends anymore. That can’t happen, Tucker.”

“I don’t think that will happen,” Tucker said, wondering where Wash was. Probably cleaning the kitchen. Hopefully cleaning the kitchen. “Church is gone, dude.”

It was amazing how good Tucker had become at reading someone’s expression through the tilt of their helmet. “If that was supposed to make me feel better, Tucker, it did not,” Caboose sniffed.

“What about this?” Tucker held out the bottle marked joy, the one that matched Junior. Caboose had claimed to hate babies, but he loved Junior like a nephew. 

“No, thank you.” Caboose sat up.

“I promise it will make you feel happy,” Tucker said, but Caboose shook his head.

“Tucker, you cannot bottle up emotion and pass it from person to person. It does not work that way.”

“Fine,” Tucker said, tucking it away. “How about some cookies?”

Caboose visibly brightened at that. “I always like cookies.”

“I don’t see how that’s any different, but whatever dude.”

“Oh Tucker, you are not very smart about this kind of thing.” Caboose patted Tucker on the shoulder, then used Tucker to push himself to his feet, which sent Tucker sprawling on the ground because he was just too goddamn big. “That’s okay. I will help you.” He helped Tucker back to his feet, and they went off to eat the snickerdoodles Tucker had made late last night. Snickerdoodles had been Church’s favorite.

***

Carolina didn’t spend any more time around them, but she at least stopped stealing Wash, so. Perhaps he’d saved Wash from a slow painful death by lung cancer. If anything could kill Wash, it would have to be his own body turning traitor. Grif hadn’t been by in a couple days either, and Red base had been worryingly quiet. Tucker trusted in his plan and his good intentions; perhaps the potion had helped Sarge realize that the Blues were not his enemy, hadn’t been for longer than they had been at war. He hadn’t said anything to Caboose or Wash, though. Tucker was hopeful, not stupid.

Grif did come by around noon on the third day, right when Tucker was about to get concerned, so. Right on schedule. Tucker was engrossed in his datapad, reading the latest update about the adventures of his fictional self and Wash’s fine ass, and he didn’t notice until Grif heaved a sigh.

“Did you ever notice how shiny Lopez is?” Grif asked.

“Not really,” Tucker said without looking up. It was just getting to the good part, with Wash taking off his helmet in the rain. That would be a good look for Wash. Happy, that is, not wet. He’d seen Wash wet and he looked more like a drowned cat than anything else.

“He is,” Grif said, dreamily. “When the light hits him, and he shines bronze in the sun.”

“Dude.” Tucker put the datapad down, alarm bells faintly ringing inside his head. “Dude.”

Grif didn’t look at him, gazing at the clouds again. “Have you ever heard him sing?”

“Uh, yeah. I have. It’s how we got you to turn off your radios, remember?”

Grif sighed. “He’s a really great singer,” he said like he’d had some sort of stroke and forgot what Lopez really sounded like. “The radio doesn’t do him justice.”

“Wait what? Are we talking about the same Lopez? The Mexican robot?”

“Yeah,” Grif murmured. “He never sings anymore. Why do you think?”

“Because he’s taken pity on us poor humans and spared us the torment.” Tucker shook his head.

“I want to fuck him.”

“Wait, what?” Tucker blinked at Grif, unable to form coherent thought. Tucker must be the one having a stroke because there was no way Grif just said what Tucker thought he said.

Grif drew himself up defensively. “Oh, like you never wanted to fuck Church when he possessed Lopez. I saw the way you looked at him!”

“That was Church, man,” Tucker said, his mouth working without input from his brain, still hung up on the thought of Grif and literally anyone who wasn’t Simmons. Tucker believed nothing happened just as much as he believed something needed to happen. “That was totally different!”

“How is that different? We walked in on you blowing him!”

Tucker didn’t remember Grif there, but then again he doubted he would remember the entire 2008 Lions defensive line tripping over their own feet if they had fallen into the room at the time. Church had figured out how to vibrate. “For one, I can understand Church.”

“Your monolingualism is not something to be proud of,” Grif said archly, like he spoke a damn word of Spanish.

“For two…” Tucker did not remind Grif that Lopez was, well. Lopez. “What about Simmons?”

“What about Simmons?” Grif asked. “He’s not nearly so glossy.”

Tucker just stared at Grif in barely concealed horror. He’d never heard Grif speak of Simmons in such dismissive tones. What could possibly have happened? And why, in the name of all that was good and holy, was Grif continuing to wax poetic on the way the star-shine slid across Lopez’s finish? Lopez didn’t even like Grif, whereas Tucker was pretty sure if Simmons heard this he’d die.

“Have you two seen Wash?” Carolina asked. Tucker turned automatically at the sound of her voice, and then had to look twice. She looked…she looked like she hadn’t slept in two days or eaten in three. She looked like she was about to put a bullet in them if they gave her the wrong answer. She looked very much like she had when they first met.

“Uh, no?” Tucker wasn’t sure if he would lie to her. On the one hand, he was pretty sure the last time he’d seen her on the hunt like that, she’d wanted the man at the end dead. On the other hand, there was a difference between heroism and suicide. Thankfully he did not have to choose; he had no idea where Wash was.

“I have eyes for nothing but Lopez el pascado,” Grif declared. “Have you seen the golden perfection of his cuerpo?”

Carolina’s eyes narrowed. Tucker decided discretion was the better part of valor and ran for his fucking life.

***

He did find Wash, after all, hiding in a cave with a good vantage of both bases and no way to approach unseen. “Tucker,” Wash said, raising one hand in weary acknowledgment.

“Carolina’s looking for you,” Tucker said. “She looks pissed. What did you do?”

“Nothing!” Wash’s voice cracked, and Tucker decided that Wash had done something he didn’t want to admit.

“Then why are you hiding up here?”

Wash rolled his eyes inside his helmet. “Sarge.”

“Sarge?” Tucker repeated, sitting down next to Wash.

“He’s trying to recruit me.” Wash gave a little huff of a laugh at the ridiculousness of it. “He keeps speaking of the glory of Red Team and my yellow stripe being more red than blue.”

“What?” That was almost weirder than Grif going on about Lopez. Almost. “What? Kaikana has yellow armor and she’s a Blue.”

“Yeah, well, apparently my stripe is tempting.”

“Dude.” Tucker cast about for something to say. “What the fuck.”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Wash sighed and rested his head against Tucker’s shoulder. “Is Sarge planning some double-cross?”

“I dunno,” Tucker said, which was not exactly a lie. He didn’t know what was going on. Friendship, in his experience, did not including creeping the fuck out of people. 

***

“I’m defecting,” Simmons said in the middle of their dinner. He was standing in the doorway, his kit slung over his shoulder.

“Again?” Tucker asked, rather dumbly. This was not how he’d planned. This was nothing like he planned.

“Simmons! Come have pancakes!” Caboose waved the maroon soldier over. Simmons took his helmet off and sat down next to Caboose, defeat in the lines of his shoulders and the set of his mouth. At least someone besides Tucker at the table would eat without a helmet, Tucker thought as Caboose dished up pancakes and scrambled eggs for Simmons. Though he’d just as soon not see how absolutely destroyed Simmons was.

“What happened?” Wash asked, sounding like he really cared. Dangerous, around Simmons.

“Sarge kicked me out of my room.” Simmons poked at the food with his fork. Tucker wasn’t insulted; there was a sixty-six percent chance it had been made by someone who still hadn’t grasped the difference between a kitchen timer and a smoke alarm. “And I’m not staying with Grif.”

Caboose put his fork down and cocked his head. “What’s wrong with Grif?”

“Aside from the defensive lack of personal hygiene, garbage hoarding, and general odor?” Simmons stabbed a pancake, rather savagely. “He’s decided that he wants nothing more than to suck Lopez’s toes. Lopez. The goddamn robot.”

Everyone took a minute to try to erase that mental image. Simmons looked so dejected, Tucker couldn’t even properly hate him for bringing it. “Why did Sarge kick you out of your room?” Wash asked finally.

“For you,” Simmons said with no real rancor, understanding without being told how much Wash had to do with it.

“What,” Wash said, and choked on his coffee. Caboose helpfully pounded him on the back until he begged for mercy, and Simmons watched the whole thing with a thousand-yard stare. In any other circumstance, Tucker would be paging Grif on every shared frequency. “He does know I’m not going anywhere, right?”

“I don’t think he cares.” Simmons decided the food was acceptable, and set to actually eating. Which was good, because Tucker made awesome goddamn pancakes. “I’m staying here until Carolina snaps your neck. Maybe then I’ll get my room back.” And even if nothing else had spoke of how terrible things were, Simmons’ assertiveness would have.

“What?” Wash yelped. Caboose hit him a few more times, then looked at Tucker, his eyebrows judging through his helmet.

“I don’t know. She’s pissed off. I was a little distracted by Grif.” Simmons sighed. “I want my organs back.”

“What is going on here?” Wash asked. “Did someone drop acid in the Red’s water tank or something?”

“No. Tucker gave them magic potions,” Caboose said, looking straight at Tucker. “Magic potions of emotions. Now they have someone else’s emotions. I told him no.”

Tucker almost would have gotten away with it. Almost. But Wash knew Caboose too well, and he looked at Tucker. “What did you do?”

“I offered them some. You know. Perspective,” Tucker said. “Liquid courage.”

Wash shook his head. “Jesus Christ.”

“Wait, this really is your fault?” Simmons asked.

Tucker shrugged. “Guess so.”

He never saw the punch coming. He was simply sitting at the table one minute, the next on the floor with his eye socket exploding in pain. “Fuck.”

“You deserved that,” Simmons said from above him.

Tucker opened his mouth to argue. But Simmons looked legitimately upset, and that was the opposite of what Tucker had been trying to do. He’d had good intentions, but how many times had someone’s good intentions lead to Tucker, personally, getting shot at? Too many. “Yeah,” he said. “I did.”

Wash hauled Tucker to his feet and didn’t say anything, either to Simmons for punching him or Tucker himself for starting this mess, and the silence spoke volumes more than any words he could have found.

Caboose brought him a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a towel. “Stupid Tucker,” he said, but his voice was almost fond.

***

Tucker escaped after dinner. Wash and Simmons assumed that Tucker had just offered alcohol, and that Caboose’s protests to the contrary were just him being, you know, Caboose. Tucker was mildly disappointed in Wash for that, severely disappointed in Simmons. Both of them should know better by now. If Caboose said something had happened, it had happened, no matter how odd it seemed. Sometimes, too many times, Caboose was the only one who knew what was going on.

Still, it kept them from asking too many questions. Tucker wasn’t really sure how he would explain it. They didn’t know about Sangheili, didn’t know about their chemistry light-years ahead of humanity’s. Didn’t know about their religious traditions, based so much more on the sacred food and drink than any other human religion, even the Catholics with their crackers one apiece. And the hardest part would be why he shared the bottles with his friends.

Because that’s what they had done, when he and Junior had shown up. They had welcomed him and his son, and outside whatever diplomatic bullshit he never paid too much attention to, they shared with him what they had, welcomed him everywhere. It had been distinctly odd, at first, to be accepted so readily.

And yet, they’d never gone deeper than ritual, and it had rung false after a while, and he’d tried to not been so shallow with Wash when they’d adopted him, Carolina when she found them, and he never should have given it to Carolina.

He sent her a message, acutely aware that she’d been looking real rough since he gave her the drink. And when he didn’t get a reply, he wondered just how badly he’d fucked up.

Not too much. He’d offered freely, and she had taken it, because Carolina loved adventures. She hadn’t even asked. There was only so much guilt that was his, surely she had to share some it it.

Or he was making excuses, it could have been that.

Carolina didn’t reply to his message, but she did show up after a few minutes and sit next to him, her helmet dangling from her fingers. If it was possible, she looked worse than she did before. “I’m PMS-ing,” she said, looking at the base and not Tucker. “I’ll be back in a week.”

“I thought that was a myth,” he said without thinking. “I thought you were always like that. This explains so much.”

Carolina turned her eyes on him and wow, if she’d had lasers he’d be nothing more than a pile of ash. “This has never happened before,” she said through gritted teeth. “But if you have a better idea for why I want to paint the walls with Wash’s blood for no goddamn reason…” She trailed off. “What happened to your face?”

Was he a bad person for shaking his head? Tucker deflected and asked if she needed anything, and escaped as soon as he could when she said no, he couldn’t help. The bottle he gave her…did it really say welcome? Or had it been labeled with the first blow of battle? 

That was a question for a bottle of vodka, cheap as hell and a punishment to drink. He sucked it down lukewarm and straight and hated himself for it, but he couldn’t think of a way to fix this sober. Maybe drunk off his ass he could, or at least maybe at least then the guilt would stop gnawing behind his ribs.

This would be so much easier if he could fix it by stabbing someone, Tucker realized when the bottle was half gone. Never mind that they’d solved literally no problems like that. One day there would be a problem that could be solved by swish, swish, stab, and that would be a good day. Until then, well. Getting stabbed as part of a cunning plan to reveal the villain wasn’t going to work here either. He was the villain.

Fuckberries.

How was he supposed to fix this? Everything was fucked up, everything was worse, nothing had worked. He never meant to hurt anyone, and look where his good intentions had lead him. Straight to hell. Didn’t they count for anything? He wasn’t a bad guy, not like the other people who’d made their lives hard.

It was a very long night for Tucker and his bottle, and the alcohol did nothing to make him feel less like running far, far away. He couldn’t ask for help, not when he couldn’t confess. They’d kill him. Carolina would kill him. And then nobody would fix it, and he’d be dead, which he had been trying to avoid throughout this whole episode.

Tucker didn’t even like vodka.

***

“Tucker?” Caboose said. “Are you done?” 

Tucker jerked awake from where he was lying on the floor, half-dressed, half-dead, empty bottle still in his hand. “Go away, Caboose.” From the angle of the sun, it wasn’t much past dawn. And it was too bright, punching him in the eyeballs worse than Simmons had. God, he wished he was fully dead.

“You make poor choices,” Caboose sniffed. “Stupid Tucker.” He hauled Tucker to his feet, and it took everything Tucker had not to puke down Caboose’s chest. That would be a bad thing. Probably. “We need to go save Wash.”

“What?” Tucker asked, closing his eyes and willing the room to stop spinning, without much success.

“Wash went to talk to Sarge and he never came home,” Caboose said. He shoved Tucker towards the door. “Shower, Tucker, you smell like my dad after a long night.”

Tucker stumbled off, too hungover to argue. Pain was lurking, waiting for him to be awake enough to properly suffer. He showered, cold, and brushed his teeth and swallowed some painkillers he didn’t really think were going to help.

“This one has a friendly color,” Caboose said, walking in the bathroom door and shaving ten years off Tucker’s life.

“Caboose!” Tucker howled.

“Don’t wake up Simmons,” Caboose howled right back, only quieter. How the hell did he whisper a scream?

“Stop. Sneaking. Up. On. Me.” Tucker jabbed his finger into Caboose’s armored chest, which had about as much effect as punching a tank.

In response, Caboose thrust the bottle into Tucker’s hand. It was bronze, the color of Blood Gulch’s dirt and walls in his memory. The top simply said “undo.” Or maybe it said “cockbite.” Whatever. Anything would be an improvement. “Come on, Tucker. We need to fix this. It was cute for a while but it needs to stop now.”

Tucker stared at him and Caboose rolled his eyes. It was fair, Tucker conceded. Caboose was much better at touchy-feely bullshit than Tucker, who had just attempted to solve problems with goddamn magic potions. He would never claim to be bored by the monotony again.

***

The raid on Red Base was as well-planned and as daring as anything they’d ever done, which is to say they winged it, and once they walked past a naked Donut stretched out on a towel and Lopez hiding, presumably, from Grif, they were in absolutely zero danger. Still, the whole way there Caboose kept up an absolutely insulting stream of chatter about helping Tucker clean up his messes. Or so Tucker assumed. He muted Caboose’s channel after fifteen seconds.

Ride, die, or kick off a building.

Tucker unmuted him once they were actually inside Red base, courtesy of Grif’s passcode. All fives, because then he just had to hold down the button. “I am sneaking, sneaking, sneaking,” Caboose chanted as they crept down the hallway, and Tucker tried very hard not to puke in his helmet, and blamed that on the hangover.

“There are no defenses,” he said to Caboose. “Why are there no defenses?”

“Because I took them down,” Wash said wearily, and Tucker swore he felt his heart stop.

“What the fuck,” Tucker said, when he was reasonably sure he wasn’t going to just die. “Sarge won’t let you leave?”

Wash shook his head. “No, but I think there’s been more than enough excitement lately. The last thing we need is someone to get shot. Specifically Grif. Lopez might actually shoot him.”

“He can try,” Tucker said, and Caboose nodded, because whatever the Reds thought, the Blues were firmly not fans of Lopez, who had been far too helpful to O’Malley, and who was kind of a jerk anyways.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Wash said. “And I don’t want to know. Just tell me you didn’t give Simmons my room.”

“Don’t be stupid, Washington,” Caboose said. “Being stupid is Tucker’s job. We won’t make you leave.”

“He might shoot you,” Tucker said. “You’re technically the leader.”

Caboose nodded. “Yes. But not turn you out. Keep moving,” he added to Tucker, poking him in the back with -thankfully- the butt of his gun.

Red base was laid out identical to Blue base, right down to what counter the coffeepot was on. Blue base was cleaner though, and Tucker took pride in that. He didn’t do any of the cleaning but he still took pride in it. “I don’t want to know what’s going on,” Wash repeated. “Do I need to know?”

Tucker took his helmet off and looked Wash deeply in the eyes. Well. Visor. “Do you trust me?”

“What kind of question is that?” Wash’s voice got high but not the highest, like he was trying to decide if he was offended or not. “Of course I do, Tucker.”

“Then go be lookout and don’t ask questions.”

Tucker dumped the bottle in the coffee pot, prayed it would be enough, prayed all of them would drink it. Just to be sure, he texted Carolina. “Trust me,” he wrote. “Drink Red Team’s coffee. Please.”

And then they went back home, to pry Simmons off their couch.

***

Within forty-eight hours, everything was back to normal. Donut built a bonfire. Carolina and Wash sat next to each other on an ammo crate, holding hands where they thought nobody could see. Grif and Simmons had their heads together, talking in low tones about something Tucker could not possibly care less about. Sarge was detailing some plan to Lopez about killing the Blues once and for all.

“Cover for me,” Tucker whispered to Caboose. “I need privacy.”

“Of course, Tucker,” Caboose said, like Tucker knew he would. They were the last two standing from Blood Gulch, and that meant something. Something the Reds, who’d never lost anyone permanently could understand. Something Carolina and Wash understood all too well.

The potions were powerful, so powerful, and while Tucker’s vision had returned to normal, he wasn’t entirely sure the others would have without help. Maybe they did and the doctored coffee didn’t make a difference. He didn’t care. They were back to normal levels of chaos and he never wanted to go through that again. He never wanted to be the bad guy again. He would never complain about anything ever again. He was going to spend the rest of his life with his friends and out of trouble and never, ever, try to fix things again.

The potions belonged, as Indy would say, in a museum. They were powerful, and beautiful, and important religious artifacts. They didn’t belong under his bed, and he removed them, carried them out of the room. They should be displayed somewhere back on Sanghelios, so Junior and his friends could be dragged in front of them on some field trip they thought was boring, where they may see one thing that would stick with them for the rest of their lives. The little elite warriors should see them, should know they existed even as they sniggered over how one or another was shaped like a dick.

Tucker dropped the box off a cliff and turned back. Let the priests worry about the past. He had a family to take care of.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
